On this particular day I was working in the Talent Relations department when the phone rang. I picked it up and the guy on the other end said he was George Carlin. I knew it was him immediately. I’d heard his voice thousands of times as I listened to his albums growing up, especially the one where he spoke those legendary 7 words you can't say on television. To this day I can rattle them off in perfect Carlin cadence (I’ll spare you that).
The man was an inspiration to me – to the point where I
even performed stand-up in New York.
His wonderful parody about weather forecasters (where else can you consistently
be wrong and still keep your job?) as the "Hippy Dippy Weather Man," Al Sleet,
inspired me to do a weather rap which was part of my act. Wow! Now he was on the
phone and I was talking with him! Hangin' out with George Carlin! Okay, so we
really weren't hangin' out but you get the picture.
He asked if he could get a particular video clip of an act on an MTV awards show. I would have been more than happy to help him, but the trouble was we had a strict policy not to fulfill such requests as we received many of them and we didn’t have the staff and the ability to provide such a service. Remember, this is in the mid 80s. There are no DVDs, let alone recorders. No iTunes. No You Tube. No Vimeo. Heck! Forget the Web as we know it. It didn't exist! It would be like saying that today 3D images can be projected into your living room from a TV that lets you have conversations with the characters. Fact was, the only way you could get a clip was if your VCR was set or running – and even then the quality stunk.
I told Carlin I would do everything in my power (which wasn’t much) to help him get the clip. It would be just a small token of my appreciation for all the laughter he gave me. He said “Thanks” and then I put him on hold to find out what I needed to do. Two minutes later – which is a long freakin’ time, I got back on the phone and he was still there. I told him I found the right person he needed to speak to and he said how much he appreciated it. Having worked on movies, I got to meet many cultural icons and always got a kick out of it. I was never jaded, but when George Carlin said how much he appreciated my help, that was something special.
Over the years I disagreed with him at times. “I try to find the line not to cross over, and then cross over it,” he would say. But what a talent. His faces, his mannerisms, his delivery. Impeccable. His social commentary and his finesse of the English language, stunning. Where ever you are, George, I hope the weather is beautiful.
